Friday, October 10, 2008

Jamaican Halloween Spooktacular 2008 Track 8 - Run For Your Life!!

Run for your life!! It's the 8th track in our 2008 Jamaican Halloween Spooktacular and it's coming your way!! The tune is called "Run For Your Life" by the Jamaican reggae artist Jackie Paris, not the American jazz singer and guitarist of the same name. Track 8 is lifted from a 1978 7" on the very Halloween appropriate Mummy label and produced by Winston Riley. Though it's not mentioning any specific monsters it does warn you to "run for your life, he's behind you with a knife" and works quite well with the Halloween trailer introduction. The odd thing about this record, it's sung to a tune that was very familiar and had me guessing for days where I knew it from... after a couple days I made the connection. "Run For Your Life" is sung to the tune of Disney's Snow White classic "Hi Ho" of all things. Luckily I have solved this little dilemma and you can just stop driving yourself crazy wondering where you know this song from and enjoy it on its own very un-Disney merits. I mean the song is basically talking about escaping from the clutches of someone trying to kill you and if that isn't completely un-Disney I don't know what is!

I originally wanted to fill this tune with audio from John Carpenter's classic 1978 film Halloween but instead I went the easier route by just adding some mad Dr. Frankenstein and his rampaging monster. Besides, Michael Myers doesn't utter a word in any of the movies so it would have been hard to convey what exactly was going on behind the tune.

I had to include a picture of the record label because I think it is the coolest spooky designed labels to ever come out of Jamaica... on second thought it is most likely the only label to come out of Jamaica with a monster so prominently featured. Have a great weekend... see you on Monday!